Late Night Lit: Collisions

EWF’s event ‘Late Night Lit: Collisions’ is about exploring alternative canons and genealogies of literary inheritance. We speak to some of our performers about the artists who have been essential to the formation of their writing practice.

SORETI KADIR

When I hear, read or see something that expands my ability to know history, self and societal condition better, the impact is permanent.

In my performance for Collisions, I present a collection of works in collaboration with my own written and performative work. All of these memories and new moments are entangled to journey you, the audience, through the streams of my perceptions.

ELENA GOMEZ

My writing practice is constantly evolving. I love to read widely and inconsistently, and I’m also always on the lookout for new writers to discover. As Astrid Lorange once advised, I try to read ‘promiscuously,’ with an ear to both the global and the local.

I’m often torn between developing my ‘voice’ and trying out everything new that I come across. Ultimately my ‘birth’ as a poet—which occurred much later than my birth as a writer or reader—came out of my reading of Marx for the first time. Capital is a work of extraordinary literary and intellectual merit that profoundly altered my worldview.

ADOLFO ARANJUEZ

I’m a huge fan of the singer/songwriter/dancer FKA Twigs, whose work deals with themes such as sexuality, entrapment, displacement and a sense of being alien in your own skin. These ideas resonate with own experiences of Otherness, as a queer person of colour.

I’m incredibly inspired by her masterful way of working with words, music and movement. At present, I’m cultivating an interdisciplinary practice whereby each work blends verbal and kinaesthetic modes of expression, communicating to the audience on both cognitive and embodied levels. As a writer who performs live, I’m becoming ever more aware of giving due attention to the different modalities of print and performance: aural and visual communication are much more rooted in setting and moment.

THANH HẰNG PHẠM

The first night time I held her I did not know how to pronounce her name but I loved her nevertheless. A writer, a filmmaker, a composer; Trinh. T. Minh-Ha is the artist who spoke with me. Her words and films made me feel like I was wherever she was — elsewhere, within here. I found myself in dialogue with her work. It never felt oppositional, instead it always felt relational. I suppose that’s how I would describe my writing now — as a relational body where both violence and pleasure collide.

In the second half, we invite you, the audience, onto the stage. Join us for the open mic portion of the night! Come prepared or improvise —in any genre or style — and perform a reading that responds to the theme. We ask: which texts inspire you? Email Creative Producer Linh Nguyen (linh@emergingwritersfestival.org) to express interest, or sign up on the night.